[Sust-mar] How we live

[a borboleta]

Greetings:

Below is the Introduction to my essay "How we live", which describes
our living situation here in Pictou County, Nova Scotia. It also addresses the
question of whether or not this has any relevance to how I view the world from
a deeper green perspective. The full essay is about 3,700 words. It includes
some pictures, and can be read at the internet link below.



For the Earth,

David Orton 

<greenweb at ca.inter.net>



http://deepgreenweb.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-we-live.html



How we live

 

"As age comes on, one source of enjoyment
after another is closed, but Nature's sources never fail."  (John
Muir)

 

Introduction

 

We live on a 130-acre old hill farm in Pictou County, Nova Scotia, which has
gone back to forest and a habitat for wildlife. A close friend of mine, with
whom I have worked on environmental issues ever since moving to our place about
27 years ago, has repeatedly told me that how I live is reflected in my writing
– that is, how I analyse the world and respond to environmental and green
issues. He felt my day to day living would also be of interest to those who
follow my thinking, and that I should write something about this to share with
others. This is what this post is about.

 

I remember being invited to give a talk to the federal Green Party convention in 2006 in Ottawa. My topic was whether
Left Biocentrism was relevant to Green Parties. There was a big laugh from the
audience, quite unexpected on my part, when I said how we had bought our place
in Pictou County in 1984, but that I did not believe in private property. One
of the contradictions facing the deep ecology supporter is of accepting a basic
position that humans cannot ‘own’ the Earth, yet having to use private property
‘laws’ to buy one’s own place or sometimes to acquire land in a capitalist
society for conservation and wildlife preservation purposes. Using such laws
can help Nature in the short term, but it can also, unless the basic deep
ecology view that humans cannot own the Earth is part of the conservation
discussion, foster and reinforce the legitimacy of the capitalist view, that
humans can ‘own’ other species and the land itself.

 

As readers of my writings know, Arne Naess, John Livingston, and Rudolf Bahro –
key influences for the theoretical tendency of left biocentrism within deep
ecology – all emphasized this fundamental point. Livingston expressed it this
way: “A man should no more be allowed to own the living soil than he now owns
the air he breathes.” (Canada: A Natural History, p. 223) An industrial
capitalist society, that does not recognize ecological limits but only
perpetual economic expansion and has the profit motive as driver, will
eventually consume and destroy itself. But we will all be taken down with it.
‘Private property’ or the idea that humans can ‘own’ other creatures and the
land itself, is the ultimate human conceit, which supporters of deep ecology need
to undermine, if we are to move in our societal consciousness to sharing this
planet with other species on a basis of equality, not dominance. This is a
primary goal for the supporter of deep ecology and necessary for real long term
social sustainability.

 

Another theoretical issue is the importance – or lack of it – of individual or
personal change as contrasted with major societal change. Do overall ecological
and social beliefs held by a person have any necessary relationship to how one
personally lives? I think the Left has primarily focused on institutional
change and often mocked the green emphasis on being the change you want to see
in others and the world. Both individual and societal change must go hand in
hand. I have always felt that, to have any integrity in the eyes of others, how
one lives personally, has, to some extent, to be a reflection of one’s
eco-politics. How one lives should be a kind of laboratory for trying out and
applying green philosophy and trying to sort out various contradictions. I
believe this is implicit within the philosophy of deep ecology. But it can be
hard to write about it without seeming to be a personal tub thumper, which has
no attraction for me. Perhaps this is a reason I have avoided, until now, my
friend’s advice. Below I will describe my personal living situation, and the
routine life I share with my wife Helga. I hope others will find it of
interest.

...

Continues at http://deepgreenweb.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-we-live.html



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